


if you say it with your hands

by eversall



Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, F/M, Post finale fic, self-indulgent use of poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 10:10:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13409034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eversall/pseuds/eversall
Summary: They need Gert’s anxiety medication. They need that, and sunscreen for Nico, and shaving cream and razors for the guys, and tampons and pads for the girls, and probably some form of therapy for every single one of them to deal with the aching emptiness that’s slowly wrapping around them as they get lonelier and lonelier..





	if you say it with your hands

**Author's Note:**

> i just want them to be happy :( 
> 
> title taken from taylor swift's treacherous, circa the red era. still my favorite album of hers. 
> 
> poem used in the story is ee cumming's "may my heart always be open to little". i lifted the version from a book of his poetry i have, but the poem can also be found [ here ](http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/blog/2013/11/06/e-e-cummings-may-my-heart-always-be-open-to-little/)

_i. karolina_

The house they’re staying in drips when it rains, moisture gathering along the edges of the walls and running down in little rivulets. It’s probably why there’s mold in so many places. Gert spends the better part of the first two days scrubbing everything down with a feverish look in her eyes, her eyes blinking unnaturally fast if you look at her for too long. Karolina lets her be, doesn’t say anything when the mold all starts to disappear thanks to Gert’s anxiety-driven need to keep her hands busy, and just tugs Gert into an affectionate hug when she can, soothing her hands over the other girl’s.

They need Gert’s anxiety medication. They need that, and sunscreen for Nico, and shaving cream and razors for the guys, and tampons and pads for the girls, and probably some form of therapy for every single one of them to deal with the aching emptiness that’s slowly wrapping around them as they get lonelier and lonelier.

Also enough food to feed eight people. Both Molly and Old Lace eat enough for two people, and spoiled brats they may be but the one thing that they all agree they have to splurge on is food. There’s no sense in starving, and especially not starving Molly, who is strong enough to probably single-handedly carry all of them.

Karolina is a little ashamed to admit that she’s not thinking of about a lot of those things right now. Alex plans, Chase argues, Gert worries, and Nico supplies them all with endless pessimism and dry wit. But Karolina doesn’t have it in her to care so deeply about the Plan – as Gert calls it – or maybe she’s just relieved that the rest of the group has that under control. She and Molly spend time fixing the little things, instead. They paint over the van’s Gibborim exterior, sew up the rips and tears in everyone’s clothes, plan out meals and sleeping arrangements and laundry schedules. It’s almost like she’s a normal girl, on a normal road trip with her normal friends and one sort of large, not even close to normal dinosaur.

She spends the first day trying to throw something together on the dingy old gas stove in the cabin with the ingredients that Chase and Nico brought back from the nearest grocery store, which is in the small town they’re near, which is a good ten-minute drive in the van from the cabin. They’re in the middle of nowhere.

“We’re in Malibu Canyon,” Alex says exasperatedly when Karolina brings it up. “My…friend recommended this place. We’re only about an hour’s drive from Brentwood.”

“Stop measuring everything with respect to Brentwood,” Nico says harshly. “Get it in your head that we’re not going back.”

Alex’s face falls, and Karolina knows instantly that that’s not what he meant, not even close, just like she knows that Nico’s still doing her best to hurt him. Alex turns back to his soup, and Karolina slides a hand over Nico’s knee and squeezes, her thumb rubbing circles in the fabric of Nico’s tights. Nico looks at Karolina and sighs, her eyes softening. It’s as close to an apology for Alex that she’s going to give, and Karolina’s okay with that.

It’s still mind-blowing, that she can touch Nico like this, that Nico responds to her with an eager tenderness that still sends Karolina’s head reeling. Years of keeping an iron grip over her wants, and now in a matter of weeks Nico’s pliant and soft under her, and it’s so stupid but Karolina feels like she’s living in a dream. Girls like her don’t get girls like Nico, don’t get second chances at being who they’re really meant to be.

They need to talk about it, they do. It’s not enough for them to fall asleep in each other’s arms each night in the guest room they’ve commandeered for themselves, for Nico to sometimes cling to her desperately and lick into her mouth like she might never get another chance to.

But if Karolina’s good at anything, it’s patience. She waits; she traces a half-moon pattern on Nico’s arm as they wake up half a week after running away, and she thinks about how much she just wants Nico to be happy with herself.

“You’re thinking so loudly over there,” Nico murmurs, her voice small and frankly kind of adorable. Karolina smiles, shifting on her side a little more so she can stare properly at Nico, who’s rubbing at the remains of eyeliner she didn’t quite wash away from the day before. Mentally, Karolina adds _makeup wipes_ to her ever-growing shopping list that she’s going to whip out as soon as they manage to calm Alex down a little and convince him they’re not all going to be sent to prison for life if they buy more than the bare essentials.

Their parents don’t really work like that anyway.

“Just thinking about how nice it is to wake up next to you.” Karolina says, and Nico’s face does the thing it always does when Karolina compliments her; her nose scrunches up, like she can’t quite believe what’s happening, and then she starts rolling her eyes, and then she stops, as if she’s decided that she’s allowed to enjoy Karolina being sweet to her.

“That _can’t_ be what you were thinking about,” Nico finally says accusingly, her eyes fond as she turns to Karolina.

Karolina laughs and props herself up over Nico, her hair falling out of the sloppy braid she left it in and falling forward, brushing against Nico’s exposed collarbones. Nico shivers, and then swallows hard, her eyes tracking Karolina’s lips.

“No,” Karolina admits. “That’s not all I was thinking about. But it’s true.” She leans down and presses their lips together, sighing as Nico’s mouth opens under her. They haven’t kissed enough for it to become familiar yet, and distantly Karolina thinks that she could kiss Nico forever and it would still be brand new every time. It’s stupid, she knows, but she likes that kind of stupid romance, and she’s not willing to let go of it.

“Karolina,” Nico breathes, and then she’s surging up stronger, her hands sliding to the base of Karolina’s neck and pulling Karolina down more insistently. Karolina tugs at Nico’s lower lip, swallowing down the little whimper Nico lets out at that, and gathers Nico in her arms. She pushes both of them upwards while they’re still kissing, sitting back on her legs until Nico’s straddling her, and Karolina can sweep her hands along Nico’s side, memorizing the curves of her body.

“You manhandling me is never not going to be hot,” Nico finally mutters breathlessly, pulling away to rest her forehead against Karolina’s. Karolina snorts at that.

“You’re tiny,” she says with no real heat. “It doesn’t take a lot.” Nico grins, nudging their noses together, and _this_ is all Karolina’s – the unrestrained joy, the little twinkle in Nico’s eyes, Nico, like this, soft and unguarded in the morning. “Nico,” she says slowly, “I – I really like you.”

Nico looks steadily back at her, her smile fading into something quieter, a little more bittersweet.

“ _I_ don’t even like me.” Nico half-whispers, and Karolina swallows hard, raising her hand to cup Nico’s cheek. Nico leans into the touch, her eyes so, so serious as she looks at Karolina, like she can read all the questions that Karolina’s trying to lock up in her heart. Karolina never wants Nico to stop looking at her like that.

“I really like you too, girl wonder,” Nico says, her voice cracking on the last syllable.

.

_may my heart always be open to little_

_birds who are the secret of living_

_._

_ii. molly_

Molly doesn’t really understand what being on the run means until she steps in a puddle of water in the kitchen with her socks on and then realizes belatedly that she doesn’t have any other clean pairs of socks, and she’s going to have to wait for her socks to dry or just walk barefoot.

“Ugh, wet socks. We need to do laundry soon,” Karolina mutters, her forehead furrowed in concentration as she presides over marinating the chicken. Gert makes an incredulous noise from where she’s sitting at the kitchen table, poring through a traveler’s guide to the West Coast, ostensibly finding a good city in northern California to hide out at for a while, but probably compiling a list of all the possible ways they could die, because Gert can’t quite let go of the thought that of all the things they’re facing, poisonous fungi is what’s going to take them out.

“Laundry is so dangerous!” She hisses. “We’d be in one place for too long, we’d definitely be recognized at a laundromat. They’re always playing the crappy local-ish news at laundromats, and you know in a town like this they’d broadcast the sordid news of four teens killing another teen and kidnapping a child – sorry Molly – over and over again, like some weird version of Real Housewives of Brentwood.”

“Breathe between your sentences,” Karolina advises softly, her voice so _kind_ that even Gert doesn’t say anything cutting in response. “Also, not if we just don’t look like they expect. A little makeup goes a long way to changing your face.”

“Alex won’t let us,” Gert says with a tone of finality, and she and Karolina makes faces at each other, but they don’t say anything about Alex calling the shots. It’s a good thing Nico’s off with Chase and Alex in town, because Nico is _always_ bristling under Alex’s control, and she definitely wouldn’t have let that comment slide. In fact, just to be contrary, she would have insisted that Molly go with her _right now_ to go do laundry and get her clean socks.

“I don’t have a pair of clean socks,” Molly whispers, half-hysterically, looking between her own wet socks and the carrots she’d been chopping.

“Molly,” Gert’s voice is soft, and firm, the big sister tone that Molly instinctually responds to. “Everything okay?”

Molly looks up at Gert, and hopes that the tears prickling at the corners of her eyes aren’t super visible. “We used to have so many clothes with Dale and Stacy, and now I need to worry about my _socks_.”

The kitchen is silent for a while, and then Gert’s standing up and coming to stand in front of Molly. She seems steady, in weird contrast to the high-anxiety state that she’s been in for the last three days without her meds, and Molly knows it’s for her. God, she _loves_ Gert, and she’s overwhelmed with the fact that she loved Dale and Stacy too, still does love them, and she wonders what they even think of her at all. She thinks they love her, but maybe her running away is too much, and maybe this is it. Maybe this is how she really becomes alone.

“I want Dale and Stacy to want me still,” she says, blurting it out without thinking, and it’s not what she really wants to say, but she can’t stop herself. “And I want to not worry about socks, or everyone killing each other, or – or – “

“Oh Molly,” Gert says helplessly, and then she’s wrapping her arms around Molly, tucking Molly’s head under her chin like Molly’s still ten and shorter than Gert, and Gert lets her. She feels another pair of arms snake around her waist, and she realizes that Karolina’s joined the hug too.

“It’s okay if you want all those things,” Gert says softly. Molly shakes her head, her heart in her throat as she sniffles into Gert’s shirt. “It _is_ , Mols, we’re all scared. We all want those things too, and there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“No one’s going to get killed,” Karolina says firmly from where she’s plastered to Molly’s back. “We’re all together, and we’re not letting anything happen to each other, I _promise_.”

“And of course Dale and Stacy want you. They love you,” Gert says, pressing a kiss to Molly’s hair. “Our parents all love us. They may be accidentally murderous, but they love us, Molly. They love you so much.”

“ _We_ love you so much,” Karolina adds, wiggling her fingers along Molly’s side, and Molly laughs at the ticklish feeling, and Gert and Karolina start laughing around her. It eases something in Molly’s chest, the part of her that watches movies and reads magazines and sees big families growing up together, siblings bickering and sharing clothes. That part of her isn’t dead, and Karolina and Gert ruffling her hair fondly makes her think that she can still want that for herself.

.

_whatever they sing is better than to know_

_and if men should not hear them men are old_

_._

_iii. nico_

Nico can’t really believe that this is an argument that’s happening in front of her, and it’s so bizarre she has to stifle a really inappropriately timed laugh behind her hand. She glances at Karolina, who gives her a flat, unimpressed look, and she thinks that she either wasn’t that successful at hiding her laugh or Karolina knows her too well, and she’s a little giddy at the prospect that it might be the latter.

“You did _what_?” Gert asks, her voice turning into a desperate shout on the last word like she wants to believe that Chase didn’t say what she just thought he said, but knows him well enough to know that’s a losing battle.

“I got you your meds,” Chase says, defiant, holding an orange pill bottle out. Nico sinks lower into the sofa, wondering if Gert and Chase are really going to have it out _right here_ , in front of all of them. Alex isn’t even pretending to care; he’s fiddling with his laptop, trying to mask his IP in as many layers as possible, clearly over the whole situation.

“Chase,” Gert says, her voice brimming with anger as she pushes her glasses up her nose, “those definitely aren’t the pills I left on my bedside table four days ago, so I really hope you aren’t going to tell me you just _stole pills_.”

“I did not,” Chase looks at Gert like _she’s_ crazy. “How would I have gotten the right dose if I stole random bottles? I stole a doctor’s prescription pad and wrote your prescription, and then got it filled at a pharmacy.”

“We paid for it,” Alex says absently from the table.

“Yeah,” Nico adds from the couch, “so there’s nothing stolen about it, really.”

She’s winding Gert up, she knows it, but Gert kind of needs to understand that they prioritize her, too, and that Chase would pretty much move mountains for her if she was brave enough to ask. Karolina shakes her head from where she’s sitting next to Nico, and she leans close enough to Nico to whisper in her ear _stop egging them on_. Nico tries desperately to focus on anything but the way Karolina’s breath fanning out across her neck is more distracting than it should be.

Gert’s spluttering wordlessly, and she clenches her hands into fists. “ _You stole from a doctor’s office_?” She shrieks.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Chase says, lips quirking up a little as he smiles at Gert. “I walked in while she was on her lunch break and took it. Small town people are _really_ trusting.”

“Chase!” Gert crosses her arms. “None of what you’re saying is making any of this better! You can’t just go fake prescriptions, the doctor could get in trouble if you used her ID, they – “

“You need this!” Chase shakes the bottle at her, the pills rattling, and his eyes are harder now, a little more hurt, and this has just turned from Gert unintentionally getting worked up over the least of their crimes into something that’s solely about the fragile, delicate thing that Chase and Gert are building between them. Nico doesn’t feel like laughing anymore.

“It’s not important enough to steal!” Gert says, her voice brimming over with frustration.

“ _It is to me_!” Chase doesn’t raise his voice, but he might as well have with the deafening silence that follows that statement; even Molly, who’s been steadily breaking cauliflower apart with her bare hands at the table next to Alex stops what she’s doing and watches Gert’s face go through a heartbreaking series of emotions. “Why can’t you accept that?” Chase asks, sounding defeated, and Gert’s shoulders slump. They all know the answer to that question, and it isn’t easy.

“Okay,” Gert says. Her voice is quiet and unsure. “Um, do you want to come set them down in my room?”

It’s a peace offering, and it’s an invitation, and Chase nods, his face so open and vulnerable when he looks at Gert that Nico feels like she’s intruding even though it’s the damn living room. Karolina tugs at her arm.

“C’mon,” Karolina says, her eyes unbearably kind as she looks at Nico. “Let’s take a nap. I’m tired.”

Nico know Karolina isn’t, but she lets the other girl lead her down the corridor to their room anyway, lets her pull them down onto the mattress, tangled together from head to toe.

“Would you steal for me?” Nico wonders out loud, dragging her fingers across Karolina’s cheek, and Karolina smiles at her.

“Probably,” She says. “But I think I’d find another way anyway. Would you accept my stolen goods?”

“Yep,” Nico rolls her eyes. “I’m not stupid. And I’m not – so unsure.”

“She’s unsure because she thinks she’s a second choice,” Karolina says absently. “It makes sense.” Nico’s heart freezes in her chest, and it feels like she’s been hit in the chest by a truck. Karolina’s not even looking at her, staring at the ceiling and tracing designs across Nico’s palm, but Nico _needs_ her desperately to look back. She needs to see Karolina look at her with her impossibly sweet eyes and understand the longing that Nico felt for _years_ that she ignored until Karolina blindsided her that night, sparkling and beautiful in her pink dress and looking like the kind of person who’s too unbearably good for Nico.

“You’re not my second choice,” Nico says, her voice thick with emotion that she can’t quite express past the lump in her throat. “You know that, right?”

Karolina looks at her in surprise. “I know that.”

“I just – “ Nico struggles to take a breath, a sharp and painful ache in her chest, “Alex – it’s not like I lied to him, but you’re _you_ , and I never even seriously though this would happen, and we – “

“We fit together, Nico,” Karolina says slowly, intertwining their fingers together and squeezing fiercely. “You’re happy with me. And if you decide tomorrow that you’re happy with Alex, I’ll believe that too. Right now, you chose me. That matters.”

“I’m going to choose you, always,” Nico says, and she’s crying now, just a little bit, and she’s furious with herself, but Karolina wipes the tear away, her face so _kind_ , and god, Nico can’t bear to be away from her. “Now that I know you’re an option – it’s going to be you.”

Karolina kisses her, and it feels like coming home.

.

_may my mind stroll about hungry_

_and fearless and thirsty and supple_

_._

_iv. gert_

When she had been younger she’d watched rom-coms with a guilt free conscience and dreamed of princes saying beautiful things to her, because clichés have always been something she liked. She doesn’t dream about those things anymore, and she shelves her need for princes on white horses, but of course Chase Stein is exceptional even in this; he comes along, her prince who wears long-sleeved shirts to hide the fading purpling bruises on his arms and brings her an orange bottle instead of flowers, and he knocks all expectations out of the park.

She thought, when he’d started ignoring her at school, that she’d forget how much she cared about him with time, but he’s destroyed any chance of that happening. Chase has ruined her for anyone else, she thinks, and she looks at him sitting on their bed rolling the bottle between his fingers and thinks that it doesn’t matter anymore if he decides one day that he doesn’t want her; she’s never going to be able to forget him.

“How did you know my prescription?” She asks, sitting down next to him. She and Chase have the bigger bedroom, because this bed has an actual frame with a trundle bed they can pull out at night for Molly, and so Old Lace can curl up near the door, their overly large, predatory watchdog. She’s glad Molly isn’t here right now, that her sister is kind enough to give her space to develop whatever she and Chase have going on.

He looks up from beneath his impossibly pretty eyelashes. “You told me, “ he says, “yesterday. It was the middle of a pretty long paragraph about the stigma of mental health issues, I think.”

“Huh.” She makes a face. “Anxiety was probably getting really bad. I don’t remember everything I said. I can’t believe I actually fit my dosage in there.”

“You’re a strange one,” Chase agrees, his cheeks dimpling as he smiles impishly at her, and she rolls her eyes, reaching for the bottle and throwing it across the room into the duffel that contains all of her and Molly’s stuff.

“Thank you,” she says emphatically, holding his gaze, and he nods. There’s an emotion she can never place in his eyes when he looks at her, something deep and immeasurable. She’s a little afraid of it; if it means what she thinks it means, he’s more perfect than she imagined, and she’s not sure if she’s ready to deal with what that means she must think of herself, to have missed it.

“It was important,” he repeats quietly. “Not just to me, to all of us. But uh, really important to me.” He holds his hand out, palm up, and Gert’s breath catches in her throat, but she slides her hand along his palm, and his hand envelops hers as he pulls her down onto the bed.

“If this was our regular lives,” Gert says, propping herself up on his chest and carding her fingers through his hair, “I would buy you a watch.”

Chase tilts his head, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “A watch,” he repeats. Gert hums, nodding her head.

“It would be beautiful,” she says, “and vintage, and it would be the kind of thing a boy next door like you would look really good in, and it would be sort of – “

“ – old-fashioned,” Chase says, and he’s smiling softly at her now, his eyes impossibly bright. “The stuff you won’t admit to liking.”

“I named my dinosaur Old Lace.” Gert laughs. “I don’t think it’s a secret.”

Chase shakes his head, and he places his hand over her heart, and Gert can feel the heat of his palm past the thin layer of her shirt and her bra. “You’re a romantic,” he says quietly. There’s something unspoken there, something sad that has to do with why Chase knows that when she’s been hiding it from him all these years. He looks at her, searching her face for something. “So am I,” he breathes out.

She doesn’t know anything to say to that that doesn’t rip her heart right down the middle, so she kisses him instead, a desperate drag of their lips that he fuels when he clutches her hair and her skin and her clothes like she’s being ripped away from him. It feels like the end of the world, sometimes, running away, and she wants to go back in time a year and kick herself for never taking a chance. On any of them.

.

_and even if it’s sunday may I be wrong_

_for whenever men are right they are not young_

_._

_v. alex_

“We’re going to do laundry,” Nico announces to him, and Alex just looks at his laptop.

“Okay,” He says, and he can barely hear himself say it, struggling to breathe against the tidal wave of emotions that’s enveloping him.

“Okay?” Nico asks, sounding surprised, and he finally drags himself away from an old screenshot of a chat log he had saved in a random folder. He must have been in a hurry that day, to save the log under a folder he’s labeled _dog pics_ but mostly contains, for whatever reason, pictures of extinct animals.

 

[ **alex** ] no frank said he thought he and lina had a CONNECTION

[ **alex** ] so he’s gonna try to hang out with her again instead of joining the game tonight

[ **alex** ] even though I told him the only connection he has is his bad wifi

[ **amy** ] what a wild story

[ **alex** ] DON’T

[ **alex** ] I’m telling you about frank being stupid and you’re reverting to the worst pun in the book

[ **amy** ] I know

[ **amy** ] that makes it even wilder

[ **alex** ] STOP

 

Amy was the only one who never let go of the habit of making Wilder puns. He wishes now he had told her to keep making them, to keep laughing, to smile wider, to ignore her mother, to live, to live, to live.

“You’re just gonna let me go? When you’ve been such a hardass about it for the last two days?” Nico asks caustically, and Alex looks at her and sees Amy and sees the girl he betrayed and sees the girl who broke his heart and sees every mistake he’s made and he’s _furious_.

“Do whatever the hell you _want_ , Nico,” He snaps, and Nico reels back, but he’s done. His bones ache, like they did the night Amy stormed out of Timely and then never came back, when he sat on his bed and stared at his shaking hands and thought that this was how people became messed up, losing things that should have never been lost.

He leaves the cabin that Darius gave him in exchange for dumping half his trust fund anonymously into Andre’s sister’s bank account. She has a baby on the way, and Alex wanted to give her all of it, but Darius told him to save it for a rainy day, his voice weirdly worried, as if he thought that Alex hating his father meant that Alex was now Darius’ problem, as if they didn’t all know that Alex was weak enough to betray Darius too, if his hand was forced.

Malibu Canyon is dry and humid, and the dead grass is scratchy under Alex’s legs when he sits on a little bluff a little way out from the cabin and looks at the trees. What the hell is he playing at? What the hell are any of them playing at? Amy was the oldest, Amy was the one who was good at this stuff, who would have known how to keep them together.

He hears Nico’s footsteps before he sees her crouch down next to her, her combat boots strikingly impractical. She looks unsure, and he doesn’t want to face her right now, but he does it anyway.

“I saw the chat log,” she offers, and Alex drops his head into his hands, shutting his eyes and counting to ten to swallow away the lump of emotion in his throat.

“She should be leading us,” Alex says finally, his voice tight. “She was – she was the one I looked up to. Fuck!” His voice echoes through the hills as he _screams_ , slamming his hand down beside him. There’s a sharp pain as pebbles wedge under his skin.

“I’m sorry,” Nico says, and she’s looking at Alex with the kind of sympathy he never wanted. Not from her. “For everything.”

“I am too,” he sighs. “Look, you really can do what you want, Nico. You don’t have to listen to me.”

“I don’t mind you leading us.” Nico sits down properly next to him, folding her legs under her. “I just don’t know how to be your friend again.”

“Do you even _want_ to?” Alex asks, bitterly. Nico raises an eyebrow, like it should be obvious.

“Yeah.” She hesitates. “But you know, Karolina, and I don’t want to make it weird for you – “

Alex laughs. He can’t help it. “ _That’s_ what you’re concerned about?” He shakes his head, thinking of a time when he used to catch Karolina looking at Nico in puzzlement, like she was working out a challenge she’d never been given before. When they were all younger, it had seemed obvious to Alex that he was never going to get Nico because even if he did, he was never going to be as good of a person as Karolina. He’d forgotten it over the years, but Karolina was the kind of person you could never hate for being better than you; you _wanted_ her to be all that and more.

“Aren’t you?” Nico looks at him like he’s crazy.

“I’m not the kind of guy who thinks that the only way someone can be happy is with him,” Alex points out. “I’m not that stupid, and besides. I just fucking want my friend back. I’m – “ He stops.

“You’re lonely,” Nico guesses. Alex draws a deep breath.

“I know she was your sister,” Alex says hoarsely. “But you remember how it was when we were younger. Gert and Chase and Molly. You and Karolina. Me and Amy. She – she got me. There’s not a single fucking day I don’t think about that.”

A small hand slips into his own. “Give me some time,” Nico says quietly. “But I promise we’re all your friends, Alex. I promise we’re behind you. We believe in you too.”

They sit in silence. It’s enough for now.

.

_and may myself do nothing usefully_

_than love yourself so more than truly_

_._

_vi. chase_

Sometimes, when Chase catches Alex sitting by himself or Nico and Alex sniping at each other and then quieting down at a commanding look from Karolina, he feels almost bad for being thrilled about the way he and Gert fell together perfectly. They’re all adrift without Amy, but Nico and Alex more than others. Chase feels like he doesn’t deserve to be happy when they’re not.

But he’s given up on denying himself Gert because it’s not working, not when two years’ worth of doing that crashed and burned with the way she looked at him and said _people never look at me_ , as if he wasn’t drinking in the sight of her every day in school, wishing bitterly she still saw him as _her_ Chase instead of the idiot who wasn’t worth her time.

“I’m glad you and Gert are together,” Molly tells him as they’re carrying the laundry bags out to the van where Nico and Karolina and Alex are waiting for Molly to join them. “It’s nice to have you back.”

Chase knows what she means, and he grins and ruffles her hair as he tosses the last bag into the van, ducking as she scowls and pushes at him. “Who’s going to annoy you but me?” He grins at her, and she hops into the back haughtily, but gives him a jaunty wave as they take off.

“Be responsible!” Nico calls out of the window to him and Gert, and he laughs but Gert flushes bright red and rolls her eyes.

“C’mon,” he tells her, holding out his hand.

“You know they _all_ think we’re going to have sex?” she asks, but she takes his hand anyway, squeezing reassuringly.

“Let them think what they want.” Chase tugs her closer as they move into the house, locking the door and heading to their room. “I want a moment with you where there isn’t another nosy friend poking their head through the door and trying to gauge what base we’re at. Why does no one do that to Nico and Karolina?”

“Because Nico would kill them, and Karolina would stand by and let her, being so apologetic about it you’d feel good about your own death,” Gert huffs out, her lips twitching like she can’t contain her laughter at that, and Chase grumbles but lets it go.

“They’re more frightening than us,” Chase says, sitting on the bed. Gert smiles absently and then her eyes grow hazy as she tilts her head, concentrating on the window. Chase waits, admiring the way the light falls across Gert’s cheeks, soft and golden.

She looks at him again after a minute. “Old Lace is going to hunt for a while longer,” she says, a tiny smile lifting the corner of her lips. Chase raises an eyebrow.

“Are you _propositioning_ me? For _sex_?”

She laughs. “Shut up,” she says, straddling him, and his responding laugh dies in his throat as his hands slide around her waist and he tilts his head to look up at her. God, she’s _amazing_ , lively and warm and so intelligent, and when she turns her full focus on him he feels like he’s thrumming with energy under her touch.

“Chase,” she says softly, her eyes like liquid in the afternoon sun. “I’m glad it’s you. Here, at the end of things.”

“You have to know I’d never have been anywhere else,” he says honestly, and she sucks in a deep breath like she does any time he broaches the topic of how much he feels for her. “I wish – I wish I could have taken you to a dance.”

She laughs, a watery sound, and presses a kiss to his nose. “I was going to ask you to homecoming last year,” she confesses. “I got a little drunk, and I thought – I thought I should be brave, and use your number, and just – tell you everything.”

Chase’s heart is in his throat. “I wish I could have gone with you,” he says, his voice thick. “I wish you had shown up in that black dress with flowers and my dad had taken pictures of us and I wish – “

Gert’s hands tighten into fists like they always do when he mentions his dad, and he chokes out a laugh that’s half a sob; Gert, who always knows exactly what to say to bring people down in six words or less, is always itching to punch Victor Stein. She hates him for Chase because she knows Chase can never do it, and she makes it easier. She makes it so easy to breathe.

He buries his face in her neck, suddenly overcome with emotion, his shoulders heaving, and she clutches him harder and drags her fingers through his hair, making soothing noises. He loves her. He’d run away a thousand times if it meant running to her. He can’t tell her that yet because it frightens her, but she knows it, somewhere deep in her, just like he knows her.

“We need a plan after this,” he mumbles into her skin. “We have to find a way to get out of all of this. You need to go to college,” he adds as an afterthought, raising his head blearily and carding his fingers through her hair. She snorts.

“ _You_ need to go to college.” She taps each of his knuckles, and then leans forward to kiss him, and the tension seeps out of him. He pushes into the kiss, teases the roof of her mouth with his tongue until she groans, the sound echoing in the space around them.

There’s a dinosaur somewhere in the hills looking like an overgrown puppy, and a bunch of his friends he never thought he’d see again arguing over laundry in town, and the girl he thought he’d lost a long time ago pressing a promise into his lips. If these are impossible odds, he’ll take his chances on them.

.

_there’s never been a quite such a fool who could fail_

_pulling all the sky over him with one smile_

.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> my [ tumblr ](http://eversall.tumblr.com/)


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